Shutter(76)

“We’ll come by later and bring you a little something to eat.” Grandma held my hand.

“Yes, don’t eat this hospital junk,” Mr. Bitsilly added. “It made me sicker than my last surgery.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Wide Open

IT’S HORRIBLE TO lie to the people you love. I had to tell Grandma and Mr. Bitsilly that the ghosts were gone. I had no other choice.

In my hospital room, a man sat reading a book with a title I couldn’t make out. Every hour or so, his ghost would sigh and slam the book closed, then walk to the window and look out. The man did this over and over, all through the days and nights I was stuck there, like he didn’t have the memory in the soles of his feet, the callouses of maintaining that journey for the rest of his days. He never noticed me or asked me for anything. I suspected that in his last moments, he had succumbed to some form of dementia. It made me wonder about death in a way I hadn’t before. He was the first spirit I had seen that had taken his disease with him into the afterlife.

My second visitor came every other night and mopped the floors in my room. At first, I didn’t think he was a ghost—he walked with a limp and worked so hard. Two or three weeks into my stay at the hospital, he noticed me staring at him from across the room. “I have nowhere else to be,” he said, then turned to his bucket, the sound of his metal mop scraping on the floor. He’ll probably be mopping well into eternity, or until they bring that building to the ground.

The third one liked to talk to me.

“Can you hear me?” The woman’s voice was calming, a psychologist’s tone.

I said nothing.

“Can you?”

I turned and looked right into her eyes, but I didn’t say a word. I knew better.

“I knew it.” She smiled at me, walked to the window, and jumped out of the glass. She did this nearly every night.

The ghosts were everywhere, just like they always were in hospitals. They lined the hallways, sat in waiting rooms and physical therapy rooms, lingered inside the women’s bathrooms, and smoked on the benches outside the building. Saint Joseph’s Hospital had become the bus station of the afterlife—the place where some souls came to move on to their destinations, while others lived on the floors of the station, waiting for the bus that would never come.

The doctors said six months on crutches was going to be my reality, a full year before my leg was fully functional. Therapy and doctor’s appointments every day for a while. I was returning to the crime lab in a few weeks anyway on desk duty. With my injuries and my medical bills, I knew that it was better to stay put.

There was an optimism to moving forward. Even if my body was going to take its time to heal, my mind was awakened. The night I came home from the hospital, it was amazing to me just how many spirits lived in the hallways and apartments of my building. I counted five on my way up the stairs, walking in and out of walls. My senses were on full alert.

I sat in the darkness of my living room and absorbed the silence of home with my mother’s Hasselblad on my lap. I would put new photos of home on the walls, take more photos of things that were alive—start a new way of life. Most of all, I needed to go home to Grandma and Mr. Bitsilly more often. I rested my head back on the couch and closed my eyes.

Sleep came quickly, as did the dreams. It was the first time in years that I dreamed about Gloria in a good and peaceful way. Her hand gripped mine as we ran as fast as we could toward the road north of Grandma’s house. The light was perfect, the sunset setting Gloria’s hair on fire. We ran and we laughed until our sides hurt, racing up the last hill by the sheep corral.

“Gloria.” I breathed heavily. “You can’t leave me like that again.”

Gloria smiled, her hands on her hips. The final orange glow of the sun filled her face.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She grabbed me around the shoulders and led me into Grandma’s house. “You’re going to need me.”

Grandma always said to me that you never do things for people to get something in return. That is the white man’s way of living. You do it because they need you. You do it because if you don’t, no one else will.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THANK YOU TO everyone who helped to make this book a reality.

Thank you to the IAIA Low Residency MFA Program and the SWAIA Discovery Fellowship for their early support of the book. Thank you also to my fellow writers for the discussions, the feedback and the friendship.

To my teachers and mentors: Eden Robinson, Amanda Boyden, Ramona Ausubel, Linda Hogan, Chip Livingston, Pam Houston and Writing by Writers—thank you for the red ink, the drafts and the passing on of dreams.

To all of my biggest supporters and champions: Joan Tewkesbury—thank you for moving me to fiction as it made all the difference in the world. Thank you for your support, Beverly Morris, and for always believing. Thank you, Nancy Stauffer Cahoon, for talking me through all of it and for supporting Indigenous storytelling.

Thank you to Juliet Grames, the best editor in the world, for being so patient and supportive. You literally waited years for me to come back. You’re the best. Thank you as well to everyone at Soho. You have all been so welcoming.

Thank you to Mom and Joseph for cheerleading and being so proud of me.

Thank you to my son, Max, for reminding me, every day, to eat dinner . . .